President Obama and the Democrats' willingness to accept cuts to Social Security in the form of the gimmicky "chained CPI" right after an election where no candidate for federal office campaigned on it shows that the Right's long-term project of undoing the New Deal marches on despite the electorate's wishes.

WASHINGTON -- Members of the influential Campaign to Fix The Debt struck a posture of post-partisan political neutrality this past week, as they swarm...

Former Sen. Alan Simpson (R-Wyo.), an outspoken proponent of cutting Social Security who has referred to it as a "ponzi" scheme, has not always been s...

Although the election is behind us, the Republicans and Corporate America have rolled out a front group that's promoting the proposals of failed GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney as a way to resolve the fiscal showdown.

The Bowles-Simpson plan, which corporate CEOs, leaders of both parties in Congress and even newly reelected President Obama has indicated could be a conversation starter for the debt and tax negotiations to follow this election, could turn back the clock for older Americans.

Once again, politicians are quietly scheming about ways to implement Wall Street austerity plans, including cutting important systems like Social Secu...

I am deeply aware of the irony of talking about taking Obama on in a big fight right after an election battle where I am so strongly supporting his reelection. Welcome to politics in 2012.

WASHINGTON -- Billionaire private equity mogul Peter Peterson is investing millions of dollars in a new Washington-based campaign for austerity, plann...

The real deficit we have is an ouput gap. We are at least 12 million jobs short to get back on track to the 2007 peak. With that deficit before us, bipartisan commissions that focus exclusively on issues of federal fiscal responsibility serve only to distract.

Given the importance of Social Security to regular Americans and its partisan value to Democrats since Franklin Roosevelt, no sane Democrat should be associated with these efforts. But in an age of Citizens United and unlimited corporate donations, where Obama tacks back and forth between criticizing Wall Street and soliciting Wall Street executives for campaign funds, it is all too tempting to demonstrate fiscal "soundness" by joining this parade. Thanks to Paul Ryan, however, the president may be spared again. The association of Romney-Ryan with the gutting of Medicare and Social Security offers just too tempting a political target to throw away for the sake of impressing Simpson, Bowles, and their corporate cronies. Or so we must hope.

Both political parties have "an aversion to telling the truth," says WaPo. The truth? That newspaper's editors are part of a small but powerful billionaire-funded circle that seems to believe that any facts that don't support their distorted and unpopular ideas are deviations from the "truth."

For more than a decade, deficit hawks and their allies in the media have been promoting a grand bargain whereby Republicans agree to tax hikes and Democrats agree to cut social programs like Social Security and Medicare. That, in turn, will put the deficit on a downward path and presumably restore economic growth. The trouble with this premise is that the current deficit is mainly the result of the recession itself plus the Bush tax cuts and military spending increases. It has nothing to do with Social Security; the projected increases in Medicare spending are only the result of failure to tackle deeper health care reform.

Obama's move flummoxed the Republican Party into a week of rare silence, left Romney to speak gibberish to the NALEO meeting, and intensified support for Obama among Latinos without an offsetting backlash among Anglos. Obama's reluctant and belated acceptance of same-sex marriage accomplished something similar. Here public opinion remains closely divided, but is unmistakably moving in the direction of greater tolerance, especially among independent voters. Once again, the Republican capture by the hard right is revealed, and Romney is put in a usefully awkward position. The question, however, is why Obama waited so long, and why he doesn't pursue other areas where the Republican position is far to the right of public opinion. The answer seems to be a combination of Obama's own innate caution, and the obsessively tactical, "test-everything" orientation of his campaign strategists.

Senator Simpson, no amount of ageism can hide the harm your plan would cause for Americans -- young and old, alike.

Austerity is a false cure for a prolonged recession. The Peterson Foundation is using a genuine crisis as an excuse to bash social insurance, at a time when we should be expanding social insurance. It's appalling that so many people are gulled by this propaganda.

JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon on Thursday backed the Simpson-Bowles proposal, which cuts entitlements, other spending and raises taxes to reduce the...

As soon as one pitch ends, another begins. So this ain't over, folks, because every good medicine-show pitchman knows: You gotta keep on offering the crowd that "grand bargain" until you wear 'em down and they buy it.

WASHINGTON -- A powerful coalition of corporate executives on Wednesday praised a deficit reduction plan that has long been maligned by GOP leaders fo...

The deterioration of wages and benefits in the private sector is one reason why Social Security has never been more important.

WASHINGTON -- In less than a month, Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles, the co-chairmen of President Obama's fiscal commission, have gone from being the ...

While they differ ideologically, extreme conservatives and extreme liberals share the same basic philosophy about the nature of fiscal policy. It is framed as a false choice between two extremes.